Arts-Based Social Inclusion and Immigrant Communities—2010-2011

The role of the arts and culture in Philadelphia's migrant communities had been of interest to SIAP since its first effort to develop an inventory of nonprofit cultural providers in the city and region. Since 1996 the team has been interested in the role of ethnic diversity in stimulating cultural engagement, and immigration is clearly one of the generators of increased diversity. Work with Reinvestment Fund on Culture and Community Revitalization had convinced SIAP that immigration was a key element of the "new urban reality" that was changing the context within which the arts and culture operate. Finally, SIAP was part of The Philadelphia Migration Project--funded by the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Urban Research—which began in 2005 conducting seminars and developing a database on the topic. These various strands came together in June 2006 when Mark Stern attended a conference on immigrant arts at Princeton. As a result of that conference, Stern and Seifert with Domenic Vitiello wrote a paper that appeared in Art in the Lives of Immigrant Communities in the United States, edited by Paul DiMaggio and Patricia Fernandez-Kelly (Rutgers Series: Public Life of the Arts, 2010).

In 2010, in collaboration with the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation and with support by the William Penn Foundation, SIAP led an investigation of the role that nonprofit arts and culture play in Philadelphia's migrant communities. The pilot study centered on the concept of "arts-based social inclusion"—the idea that a set of artists and cultural organizations are consciously using the arts as a way to improve the life circumstances of new Philadelphians and integrate them into community life. SIAP's findings suggested that the concept was grounded—both as a practice strategy and a policy dilemma. The key question was best articulated by an interviewee: "How can migrants both retain their identity and enter the larger society? How can we use the arts to do that?"

 

 

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  • Publication
    Foreign-Born Population of Philadelphia, Composition and Change, 2000-2007
    (2011-01-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan C
    This map series accompanies the full report, Arts-Based Social Inclusion: An Investigation of Existing Assets and Innovative Strategies to Engage Immigrant Communities in Philadelphia (September 2010). See Section 3, "The Changing Profile of Metropolitan Philadelphia's Immigrant Communities."
  • Publication
    Mapping Arts-Based Social Inclusion: A Diversity of Ideas, Approaches, and Challenges
    (2011-01-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan C
    This summary matrix accompanies the full report, Arts-Based Social Inclusion: An Investigation of Existing Assets and Innovative Strategies to Engage Immigrant Communities in Philadelphia (September 2010). See Section 4, "Arts-based Social Inclusion--A Typology."
  • Publication
    Arts-Based Social Inclusion: An Investigation of Existing Assets and Innovative Strategies to Engage Immigrant Communities in Philadelphia
    (2010-09-01) Stern, Mark J; Seifert, Susan C
    This document reports on a study of the role that arts and culture play in Philadelphia’s migrant communities—that is, Puerto Rican and foreign-born residents and their families, including children born in the U.S. The project explored the concept of “arts-based social inclusion”—the idea that organizations and artists use culture and the arts as a means to improve the life circumstances of new Philadelphians and integrate them more fully into community life. The study confirmed that arts-based social inclusion is a productive perspective with which to make sense of this work. The report first examines the changing presence of the foreign-born in Philadelphia from 2000 to 2007 as a context for the study. The authors then discuss findings based on fieldwork conducted during the spring and summer of 2010. Two cross-cutting themes emerged from interviews with practitioners. One is that a cultural perspective provides a broader, multi-dimensional way—beyond economic need—of thinking about the process of social inclusion. At the same time, cultural practitioners working with migrant communities repeatedly run up against conventional notions about nonprofit organizational structure and capacity. The report describes a five-part typology of existing models pursued by cultural practitioners: cultural space development, community organizing, institutional networks, school-based programming, and culturally-sensitive social service. The conclusion offers guidelines for philanthropy interested in a holistic, bottom-up approach to building the arts' capacity to engage immigrant communities.